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Michael Lichter on 'Biker Generation'
Michael Lichter lies down in the bed of a pickup truck during the 1980 Sturgis rally. It's raining, and it's cold. He pulls a tarp over himself and watches as a pack of bikers follow him on the road leading out of town. The rain stops, the sun starts to peek out of the clouds, laying a golden light on the hills and fields. The motorcycle headlights reflect on the blurred wet pavement, and as they crest a hill, a rainbow forms off to the left. Lichter's camera goes, "click." The resulting image, "After the Storm," is one of 26 photographs in Lichter's "Biker Generation" exhibit, now on display at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum and at AMA headquarters in Pickerington, Ohio. "It was just one of two shots from that moment," Lichter says. Coincidentally, it was also the last time he was in Sturgis when he wasn't on assignment to make such pictures.
"In ’77 I got a bike, a 1971 Harley-Davidson FX," Lichter says. "So I started photographing my bike, and then I photographed from the bike, and then I photographed these road trips that became bike trips." In just two years Lichter says he went from, "going somewhere to see whatever, to going to motorcycle rallies like Sturgis and Daytona." The road to "biker photographer" started on that first year with the H-D Shovelhead. "That year I was out to California a couple times, and to New York and Canada," Lichter says, "always with my camera, which at that time was one body, one lens, and black-and-white film."
In 1978 he attempted to head to Sturgis for the first time, but things didn't work out so well. "I had done some work on the bike and I didn't have it together in time," he says. "But it was only a week later, so I thought, 'I'll head up that way, see what's going on.'" As it turns out, not much. "I got to Sturgis and discovered there wasn't a bike in town," he says. The next year was different. "I went back to shoot Sturgis as an event, but only in black and white." He then sent 10 shots to Easyriders' sister publication, In The Wind. Lichter says, "Keith Ball, editor at the time, sent a letter back saying, 'Great stuff, we're going to print three of them.' I wondered, 'what about the other seven.'" Later, during the 1980 Sturgis rally, Lichter discovered that is actually a pretty good average. "I got in touch with an editor there, who said, 'You know, three pictures out of 10 ... we usually don't use anything. You should be pretty happy.'" The editor then asked to see more work, which in turn got published. Over the next year Easyriders sent Lichter on a few local assignments. By the time Sturgis ’81 rolled around, Easyriders was ready to send him -- and he's had that assignment ever since. Lichter, who is also a successful commercial photographer, shows many of his images on his website, www.lichterphoto.com -- an enterprise that provides a unique, two-way means of communication with site visitors. Consider the response he received thanks to one haunting image of a leather clad hand touching the black Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The e-mail continued: "'His time of death was 15 minutes before I was born, and he would just love to know that I'm out there riding around on a rigid Panhead.'" The incident left an impression on Lichter. "I just thought, 'Oh my God,'" Lichter says. "You just don't know what you're going to see when you open up your mail or your e-mail, and the story that'll come from an image." "Biker Generation," remains on display through October 1, 2002. |
Lichter
has been a photographer all his life. He started shooting when he was 13 years old, using a Pentacon he borrowed from his father. By the late '70's, he found a way to blend his love of photography
with his passion for motorcycling.
